Site-specific assembly of gold nanoparticles on a polysaccharide surface was accomplished via a straightforward method exploiting interfacial polymer blends, selective protein adsorption and electrostatic interaction. The method could be useful in further applications due to the universal nature of the utilized phenomena.

Meet at the border: Assembly of the water-soluble cobalt tetrakis(N-methylpyridinium-4-yl)porphyrin [CoTMPyP](4+) at soft interfaces is enhanced and stabilized by its interfacial interaction with the lipophilic anion (C(6)F(5))(4)B(-). The supramolecular structure thus formed provides excellent catalytic activity in the four-electron reduction of oxygen.

It is well known that interfacial structures and charge transfer in dye-sensitized solar cells are extremely important for the enhancement of cell efficiency. Here, the normal Raman spectra (NRS) and resonance Raman spectra (RRS) of a C343-sensitized TiO2 cluster (Ti9O18) are theoretically predicted from combined electronic structure calculations and a vibrationally-resolved spectral method to ...

We study the bulk thermodynamics and interfacial properties of electrolyte solution mixtures by accounting for electrostatic interaction, ion solvation, and inhomogeneity in the dielectric medium in the mean-field framework. Difference in the solvation energy between the cations and anions is shown to give rise to local charge separation near the interface, and a finite Galvani potential betwee...

I study the contact between a rigid solid with a randomly rough surface and an elastic block with a flat surface. I derive a relation between the (average) interfacial separation u and the applied normal squeezing pressure p. I show that, for nonadhesive interaction and small applied pressure, p approximately exp(-u/u(0)), in good agreement with recent experimental observations.

There is a biomedical need to develop molecular recognition systems that selectively target the interfaces of protein and lipid aggregates in biomembranes. This is an extremely challenging problem in supramolecular chemistry because the biological membrane is a complex dynamic assembly of multifarious molecular components with local inhomogeneity. Two simplifying concepts are presented as a fra...

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were performed to investigate the interfacial binding between the single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and conjugated polymers including polythiophene (PT), polypyrrole (PP), poly(2,6-pyridinylenevinylene-co-2,5-dioctyloxy-p-phenylenevinylene) (PPyPV), and poly(m-phenylenevinylene-co-2,5-dioctyloxy-p-phenylenevinylene) (PmPV). The intermolecular interactio...

Chip-packaging interaction is becoming a critical reliability issue for Cu/low k chips during package assembly. With the traditional TEOS interlevel dielectric being replaced by much weaker low k dielectrics, packaging induced interfacial delamination in low k interconnects has been widely observed, raising serious reliability concerns for Cu/low k chips. In a flip-chip package, the thermal def...